Organizations with high volumes of data have long sought to maximize data storage performance while minimizing the cost of storage. Because of this, some organizations have turned to thin-provisioning solutions in an effort to efficiently utilize available storage space. Thin-provisioning solutions typically allocate storage space from a common pool to computing systems on an as-needed or just-in-time basis in an effort to prevent storage space from going to waste.
Unfortunately, while thin-provisioning solutions may reduce storage requirements by allocating storage on an as-needed basis, many conventional backup systems fail to take advantage of the efficiencies provided by these thin-provisioning solutions. For example, a conventional backup system may attempt to back up 500 GB of a 500 GB thin-provisioned volume, even if only 20 GB of the volume has been written to and/or allocated storage space by a thin-provisioned storage system. As such, conventional backup systems may unnecessarily negatively impact input/output (“I/O”) performance by attempting to read all data from a thin-provisioned volume without regard to those portions of the volume that have been written to and/or allocated storage space. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for efficiently backing up data within a thin-provisioned environment.